Tag: trump

More Thoughts and Suggestions for Debates (posted 9/17/24)

After reading the comments on my column yesterday, I see that some CO-ers either think that Trump shouldn’t debate again because he’s winning without it, or because of the bad debate format he’d be stuck with. 

I hope that he’s winning, but I haven’t seen convincing evidence that he is winning by enough to overcome the margin of Democrat fraud.  And if there’s a straightforward way for him to widen his lead on her – which I argued yesterday he can very likely do in a second debate – I think it’s foolish to not take the fight to her.

Not to mention that it shows too little faith in Trump, and too much faith in Kamala, IMHO!  

Several of you also argued that Kamala will never agree to anything like a fair debate format.  I’ve got some suggestions about that below, but you may be right about that. 

But if so, it’s still a win/win for Trump to try to set up a second debate: he wins if he gets another chance to show the truth about Kamala in a debate, and he wins if he offers to debate and she runs away.

But even if none of my pragmatic reasons for a second debate have swayed you, I think there is an important philosophical reason that we should make the case for robust debates, and this applies to this election and future ones.

As much as people forget this, in a democratic republic, politicians are our employees.  Campaigns are a long series of job application tests, and debates are job interviews. 

Debates aren’t perfect, of course, and are a flawed mechanism to demonstrate who deserves our votes.  Often charisma can count for more than demonstrating a mastery of policy and the ability to govern, and too often both of those can be at least temporarily defeated by a near-sociopathic ability to shamelessly and convincingly lie.

But can you name a better mechanism? 

Stump speeches can be useful, but they’re canned and controlled, and usually not even written by the candidate.  Ads can be very effective, especially when they reinforce impressions that people already have about a candidate or policy, but they’re often even less honest than politicians!  Fundraising can gauge a candidate’s breadth and depth of support, but provides no direct evidence of his/her merit.

The closest option we have to a debate, in terms of preserving the Founders’ idea of legitimately informing voters, is a town hall.  And of course a town hall can be a format for a debate.  But it also suffers some of the weaknesses of debates, in that it is susceptible to using ringers in the audience to steer the proceedings.    

I’m glad that Trump has done a lot of town halls, but the issue is Kamala.  She hasn’t done any, and there’s no reason to believe that she will ever do one, unless it’s totally rigged in her favor.  Which brings me back to the importance of a second debate: it’s Trump’s best (and possibly only) chance to expose her truthfully to the American people.

The elephant in the room (if the Haitians haven’t eaten it yet) (I kid the Haitians!) is that our current system of debates sucks.

To fix our debate system – as with fixing anything that has become dysfunctional – we must first identify why and how it has gone wrong.  I see three main reasons:

1. Moderators have a self-interest in using their bias to favor their preferred candidates in the rules, and that’s exactly what they’ve been doing for the last several decades. 

2. Moderators have a self-interest in making themselves the center of attention. (When a Candy Crowley or David Muir type says something like, “I’m going to fact check you, because I don’t think you’re right about that,” or “I want to move on to another topic,” the only correct response is, “Who gives a damn what YOU think?”  And also, “Suck it, Trebek.”)      

3. Candidates have a self-interest in only debating if and when it helps them. 

The third reason presents a difficult challenge, but there are many ways to straightforwardly fix the first two, either by choosing the moderators objectively, or by minimizing the moderator’s role to near-invisibility.

Ben Shapiro cited an interesting Jewish model for choosing good judges/mediators of disputes: each side picks their own, and then those two choose a third. The resulting three-judge panel embodies the kind of checks and balances that our Founders initiated.

Other options could be to use a pair of moderators, one chosen by each side, or to schedule two debates, one format and location chosen by each of the participants.  But I would prefer the other choice: shrink the role of the moderator to a time-keeper and nothing else.

During my decades of teaching debate and argumentation, I saw that that can work just fine.  I learned that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel, because we have existing, time-tested debate templates that we can adapt and tweak as necessary. 

There are various good models – going all the way back to the Greeks, and more recently being used in law schools, and in academic forensics competitions.  Uncle Aristotle – and two millenia of smart people after him – offered a good basic partition still used today, in which each competitor gets a chunk of time to do two basic things: “confirmation” (advancing your own argument) and “refutation” (addressing/refuting your opponent’s argument).   

Some models offer debaters the chance to choose the topics – sometimes by mutual pre-arrangement – while others offer a list of main topics to be covered, with time allotted for confirmation and refutation on each topic.  A block of time for a closing statement is almost universal. 

CO mentioned that he saw a talk by Douglas Murray last week, and I love that guy.  (Murray I mean, though I love CO too of course.  Because to know him is to love him.) Murray would have a black belt in debate, if there were such a thing.

Everybody in CO nation should look up the Munk debates – they’re held in Canada, of all places – and watch the one from June, in which Douglas Murray and Natasha Hausdorff took on Gideon Levy and the execrable Mehdi Hassan on the subject of anti-zionism vs. anti-semitism.  The twist to the Munk debates is that the audience votes for who they thought won the debate immediately afterwards.  (Murray and his partner stomped their opponents, winning 66-34.) 

Trigger warning: if you watch last Tuesday’s pathetic ABC debate and then immediately watch a substantive, enlightening Munk debate, you might get the bends.  (You may also notice that in the Munk debates, the moderator is invisible.)

While the moderator issue is easily solved, the candidate issue is trickier.  I think we should require our candidates to have at least 2 – preferably 3 – presidential debates, and 1 VP debate, as had been the practice since the late 80s, until 2020.  (The Commission on Presidential Debates, who ran that system, was biased and did a mediocre job, but that could be solved by the alternative ways to choose moderators listed above.)

The trend for the last two election cycles has been for candidates at every level to strategically refuse to debate when they thought it helped them, and I hate that trend.  I’ve discussed how I think our debate system needs reform, but I’m a conservative because I want to conserve the traditions that made this nation great, and one of those traditions for a self-governing republic is debate.

I was pissed in 2020 when the Dems ran a basement campaign for Biden, using covid as an excuse to hide him from the public as much as they could.  They obviously did so to lie about his policies and the shape he was in, but he did do two debates with Trump. 

When I found out in 2022 that dimwit AZ Dem governor Katie Hobbs was flat-out refusing to have even one debate with Kari Lake, I was disgusted.  The trend continued with Fetterman only agreeing to one debate with Dr. Oz, and that one so late that a ton of early voting had already been done.  The extent of Fetterman’s brain damage revealed in that debate illustrated the folly of exempting candidates from debating. 

I’m going to anger many always-Trumpers now.  You know that I’m all-in for him, and will be ecstatic if he wins and devastated if he loses (to the point that my wife is worried about me if Que Mala wins!).  But I hate that Trump refused to debate in the primaries.  The debate is a job interview, and I don’t think you should be considered for the job if you blow off the interview. 

I know: Trump had already had the job, so it wasn’t like he hadn’t been interviewed before.  And seeing the way his polls took off when the Dems started indicting him on BS charges, I’m sure that he would have mowed through DeSantis and the rest just like he did in 2016.  But I still wish he would have showed up and fought and won, rather than taking what felt like a negotiated forfeit.

In a Machiavellian sense, of course, Trump was smart to skip the debates.  So were Katie Hobbs and John Fetterman, and so was the Hidin’ Biden strategy in 2020.  They took the most self-serving path, and they won.

But there’s a reason that “Machiavellian” is not a compliment.  The diluted moral taint accompanying it often carries karmic payback.  If Biden had been smart, he would have refused to debate Trump this year, and he’d still be the candidate.  And if he hadn’t deteriorated so badly, there’s a reasonable chance he could have squeaked through again. 

We would all be howling about that, and for good reason. Trump would have been howling too, but with no justification.  How could he demand that Biden debate him – because the voters deserve it, or it’s not fair to duck a debate? – when he refused to debate in the primaries? 

Trump correctly calculated that he had nothing to gain by debating in the primaries, so he didn’t.  But if you defended that choice, you can’t complain if either Biden or Kamala had refused to debate Trump in the general. In fact, they had much more justification for that self-serving choice than Trump did!  He was a clear front-runner, and had showed he could defeat all comers in 2016, while Biden and Kamala are both fragile frauds, and likely to get their lyin’ arses whipped by him in a debate.    

Okay, now that I’ve enraged everyone (!), let me close by reassuring you all that I know that Trump’s flaws are tiny and his virtues gigantic, when compared to Que Mala and A-WOLz, and he has to win in November! 

But I hope he does decide to at least try to arrange a second debate, hopefully with a modified format, different moderator system, or etc.  I think JD is going to wipe the floor with Walz, and I know that Trump might well win without a second debate.  But I’ve got faith that he can crush and expose Kamala in a second round, and that doing so is his best path to opening up the kind of lead that all the leftist cheating in the world won’t be able to overcome in November!

And looking forward – after Trump begins his second term (please God!) in January – I hope we can start working hard to come up with a debate format and schedule to implement for future elections. 

Because giving up on the prospect of ever having fair and substantive debates again is the farthest thing from a bunch of hardy Ameri-cans being cautiously optimistic that I can think of!

Hamas delenda est!

Some Thoughts & Advice on Debates (posted 9/16/24)

Over the weekend I gathered some more good news stories, but I’m going to hold off on those and post them in a Wednesday column, because I’ve had the more serious subjects of debates on my mind.

As I started drafting a “debate” column, however, it kept getting longer.  And since the only repeated quibble about my columns is that they are too long – you know who you are, and how dare you! – I’ve decided to give you one column per day for today, Tuesday and Wednesday.

I know: it’s like Christmas in September!  And you’re welcome.

To start with an example of why this column got too long and must be broken up: I can’t even get into my thoughts on debates without first quickly pointing out the funniest story of last week, which happened when A-WOLz was giving what seems to have become his usual stump speech – no substance, no policy, lots of Trump-smearing and pseudo-“I’m a Midwestern dad/coach/military hero” blather. 

But in the middle of the dishonest boilerplate, he made the most Freudian of all Freudian slips.  (That’s when you say one thing but mean your mother.)

He started telling a positive story about Kamala, but instead of describing her as a “young prosecutor,” he called her a “young prostituter.” 

I’d give that reference a “chef’s kiss” of approval, but that sounds like it could be a veiled reference to Que Mala’s Willie Brown days.  And because I’m not up on my California leftist sexual slang, I’m going to leave that one alone.

But it’s still funny!  And before you can say it, I know: let’s not act like children.

Okay, on to debates – both last week’s, and in general.

I’m very happy that five days later, the shameful tongue-bath that the MSM gave to Que Mala has done her no good, and may even have hurt her.  The over-the-top leftist moderators’ bias did not gain her any of the independents she needs, and even though Trump displayed some of his less pleasant attributes, his essential Trumpiness – for good and ill – has been so baked in that it doesn’t seem to have hurt him at all.   

Kamala’s empty and evasive answers have not gone unnoticed, either.  Perhaps the most explosive post-debate development is the report from an alleged ABC whistleblower that Kamala had the questions given to her before the debate.  That is shocking to me!

Not because the idea of corrupt leftist media types cheating for the Democrats is shocking – does anybody remember Donna Brazile giving Cankles McPantsuit the questions before the debate in 2016?

No, what’s shocking is that she could have performed like THAT, even though she had the questions beforehand!  The first question was, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”

I wrote about her 330-word verbal dumpster-fire of an answer a couple of columns ago.  I pointed out how awful it was, and how she never came within 100 nautical miles of answering that rote question, which she should have been able to anticipate anyway.

But if she was GIVEN that specific question ahead of time, and had a week of intense “debate camp” to prepare, and THAT was still the best she could do?!  Sweet, merciful crap!

In tomorrow’s column I’m going to throw out some ways I think Trump can and should negotiate conditions for another debate with Kamala, because no GOP candidate should ever do a 3-on-1 cluster-schtup like last Tuesday’s “debate” again!    

But since CO posted a great question yesterday – “Which candidate needs a second debate more and why?” – that elicited thoughtful and varied responses, I thought I’d first give my answer.

And remember that while you obviously have a God-given right to disagree with me, you’re just going to make yourself look ridiculous.  So c’mon, man. 

(Why do I kid?  That’s right: because I love!)

While it might be too strong to say that Trump NEEDS a second debate more than the Cackler does, and he does need to negotiate conditions for a second debate carefully, he should definitely do a second debate.   

Because this election is way too close, with polls in nearly all the battleground states within the margins of error. There are some reasons to believe that Trump is doing better than the polls are showing – his numbers were underestimated in pre-election polls in both 2016 and 2020, and he’s doing better with blacks, Hispanics and independents than any Republican (including him in ’16 and ’20) has ever done, which should mean that he’s leading overall.

But there are also reasons to believe that Que Mala will do better than her polls indicate, primarily because of the depth of the Trump hatred that will motivate the other side to vote no matter what, and the well-known Dem fraud efforts (ballot harvesting, resisting voter ID, hinky drop box and vote by mail usage, etc.). 

We all know that Trump needs to win by enough to exceed the margin of Democrat fraud, and as close as this looks now, I’m not at all confident that he’s ahead by that much. 

So he should debate her again, for two types of reasons why – the first pragmatic, and the second philosophical. 

Let’s look at the pragmatic ones first: Kamala was as good as she could be in that debate; Trump can do much better than he did in that debate; and the moderator (if any) will be MUCH better than Muir and Davis.   

1. Kamala did as well as she possibly could… and she still wasn’t good!  Even with the moderators running interference, her vague and rambling answers left her vulnerable, time and time again.

In fact, most voters have no idea that Kamala did a solo interview with a local Philly ABC anchor on Friday.  It was a pre-recorded softball-fest with a sympathetic MSM lackey, and she STILL screwed it up.

She even repeated her first gaffe from the Tuesday debate; when the reporter asked, “What are your specific plans to bring down prices?” she launched a verbal death march of an answer with, “I grew up a middle class kid…”

You would think that after a presidential candidate went all this time without giving a press conference or a solo interview, this sit-down would have been heavily covered everywhere.  But it got nearly zero MSM attention, and for the obvious reason: she completely blew it.  (I know, but let’s not act like children.)

The more voters get to know her, the fewer votes she’s going to get, so she’s going to do as few interviews as possible. And when her best chance is to hide, and a debate with Trump involves total exposure, he should debate her, and hammer her if she won’t.       

2. Trump can do much better than he did in the first debate. While his first 20 minutes and closing statement were solid, he did pretty poorly in between, and I believe that he can learn from a painful lesson that is this fresh: don’t take the bait and get distracted, and stick to the specific facts on the issues!  (Melania should attend, and if he brings up crowd sizes or Haitians eating cats, she should walk on stage and kick him in the groin!)

On this point, he’s also got a great template to follow, provided to him by his strong VP choice.

I’ve been very happy to see the way JD Vance has handled himself over the last month.  He’s given over a dozen media interviews to MSM hacks, and he’s “won” every one of them, to one degree or another, by doing exactly what I’ve been talking about.  He doesn’t take their bait, but calls them out on the bias and distortion in their questions, and then doggedly advances his arguments.

His interview with Dana Bash yesterday was a great example.  If you haven’t seen it, you should watch.  (But make sure you’ve got an empty stomach, because she is absolutely nauseating.)  She “pulled a David Muir” – which sounds like a double-entendre, but I don’t know gay slang, and I don’t mean it that way – spending a ton of time talking up the “Haitians are not eating cats!” angle, coming back to it repeatedly, and making herself look totally obnoxious to anyone who’s not an all-in, far leftist.

JD parried her efforts well, doing the minimal amount of defending the constituent reports, and pivoting constantly back to the substance of the immigration issue, which Dana desperately did NOT want to talk about.  

Because the elephant in the room re: Springfield is the horrible results of the flood of illegal immigrants there.  And no, I’m not suggesting that the Haitians are eating elephants now! 

But only because there is no zoo in Springfield.

HA! 

(And that is why I’m cut out to be a harmless smart-ass, sniping from the comfortable environs of stately Simpson manor, and not a major-party political candidate.)

Where was I?  Oh yeah.

The main point of the story – which is horrible for the Dems and Que Mala, because it is entirely their fault, and incredibly unpopular throughout the country – is the cascading catastrophe caused by millions of illegals: hundreds of billions redirected from services for American citizens, increased crime, strains on schools and hospitals, etc.   

The best way to distract from that obvious truth is the “Trump’s racist cat-eating Haitians slur” talking point.  So Dana did her repulsive best to continually try to sell what JD wasn’t buying.  

But Vance knows that there is more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak.  (By the way, rumors that “More Than One Way to Skin a Cat” is the title of the best-selling cookbook in Port au Prince have NOT been confirmed.  So stop spreading them, people!)  And he beat her at her own game, and made her corrupt favoritism obvious.

3. The first moderators have been roundly lambasted by everyone, including many on the left, and EVERYONE not on the left!  Trump should be able to hold out for a better moderator — ask for Brit Hume and then Joe Rogan, and settle for Megyn Kelly maybe? – or even just a time-keeper who enforces time limits without interjecting otherwise.  But whoever he gets will be on notice that s/he can’t afford to repeat the level of corruption of Muir and Davis.

And even if they tried, the entire audience will be hyper-aware of that this time, and Trump can have some responses holstered and ready if they start going down that road again.

One suggestion, for the first time they show blatant bias: “I think it would make things easier if you just joined Kamala at her podium, so everyone in the audience knows where we stand.”

He could also be primed to respond to any of Kamala’s rote lies – fine people, bloodbath – if she’s desperate and stupid enough to use them again.  Just do the Reagan-esque, “There you go again,” and calmly point out the specific facts.    

Bottom line: Trump is a much better candidate than she is, and his track record is light years better than hers.  He’s an inconsistent debater, but she’s a consistently fragile and terrible debater.  And the optics of her challenging him to a debate that he refuses creates a lose-lose situation: it contradicts the reality that Que Mala is fearful and in over her head, and undermines Trump’s core brand as a bold fighter.

With this election still as tight as it is, I think it would be political malpractice for him to not take Kamala on in another debate.

Tomorrow I’ll discuss a couple of philosophical reasons Trump should debate her again, and suggest ways that he can negotiate a rematch that circumvents the pitfalls of recent debate formats.  

Hamas delenda est!

My Grades for the Debate (posted 9/12/24)

I’ll admit up front that I could only watch a few minutes live.  Because: blood pressure.  After it was over, I checked in on the coverage on the CO page and the Daily Wire, which is probably not the best way to process a debate, because it involves having your reactions mediated through the initial reactions of others. 

But over the last 24 hours I’ve watched nearly all of it, in smaller doses.  I say “nearly” because: blood pressure, still. 

But honestly, I’m so disgusted by Kamala and her MSM enablers – and so worried that the election is even close, and fearful of the horrible consequences should she win – that I couldn’t stand to watch more than the first few minutes live. 

If you’re a close reader, you will perceive my immediate post-debate frame of mind from the adjectives in the last sentence:  disgusted, worried, fearful.  I won’t be in that mode for long – I’m a toxic Midwestern male who was raised right, so I don’t do “fearful” and “worried” as a default setting – but this felt like an opportunity missed.

So I spent the actual debate hours as follows: I prayed for the country for a few minutes, then threw myself back into an “organizing my home office” project that I’ve been working on, and then watched the first half of the Lions/Rams Sunday night football game that I had DVR’ed.

I also spent part of the next 24 hours doing something that I find therapeutic when I need to burn off frustrated energy: working out.  I’m not a fanatical fitness person, but for the last six months I’ve been eating healthier and doing a daily free weights and pushup routine, and I tripled my routine after the debate. 

I may be fighting off increasing frustration over the election and our country’s future, but at least I’m starting to get some pecs out of it.  So I’ve got that going for me. 

Anyway, because my profession hard-wired me to give grades, I thought I’d grade the three debate participants: Que Mala, Trump, and the MSM. 

I’ve taken my grading system from Harvey Mansfield, a temperamentally conservative and actually great Harvard professor.  A few decades ago, Mansfield acknowledged the ubiquity of grade inflation – over 90% of grades at Harvard were “A”s – by giving his students two grades in his classes. 

He recognized that since all other Harvard profs were giving inflated grades, it wouldn’t be fair for him to give the authentic, actual grade that he believed students had earned, thus lowering their GPA.  (And likely ensuring that nobody would be taking his classes in the future!) 

So he started giving two grades: one inflated grade (which would appear on their transcripts, and was commensurate with other Harvard grades) and one “legitimate” grade, i.e. what he – with his old-fashioned, high standards! – believed the paper had actually earned.

So here are my debate grades:    

Kamala – her adusted grade (i.e. reflecting what semi-informed people who get their news from the MSM would give it) is a B.  Her legitimate (“Mansfield”) grade is a D-. 

She is an annoying liar, and she could no more get a passing grade than speak in an authentic black accent. (“Ah, ah say they-uh, Ya bettuh thank uh union membuh!”)  And she repeatedly gave her patented word salad answers to evade questions.  Example, from the FIRST MINUTE:  “Is the country better off now than it was 4 years ago?”   Legitimate answer: either yes or no, and here’s why. 

Que Mala’s answer?  It began with, “So, I was raised as a middle class kid….” And went on for – I Schiff you not – 330 words!  

For comparison, the Gettysburg Address is 275 words. 

I’ve read the Gettysburg Address.  I’ve taught the Gettysburg Address.  And Que Mala’s stream of consciousness rambling about her hardscrabble early years being born to two PhDs and raised on the mean streets of Berkeley and Montreal is no Gettysburg Address!

By the way, that moment was a missed opportunity for Trump.  As soon as the moderators came back to him after Kamala’s rambling answer, he could have said a variation of his line with Biden: “I don’t know what she just said, and I’m not sure that she does either.  But one thing is clear: she did not come close to answering your question, and we all know why.  You’re obviously not better off than you were 4 years ago, and Kamala and Biden are the reason.” 

I don’t know how many truly undecided voters are still out there, but if they exist, they had to see how dishonest and evasive Kamala was, and how annoying.  But she still gets the inflated B because, with the terrible moderators’ corrupt help, she managed to tone down her existential awfulness for 90 minutes and appear to be just an untalented, mediocre liar, instead of the worst politician of this century. 

Trump – his adjusted grade (recognizing that the MSM did everything they could to adjust it downward, as they always do) is a C.  His legitimate (“Mansfield”) grade is a B-. 

On substance and legitimate points, he won hands down, because he said a lot of true things (compared to Kamala, who said zero true things).  But those points were diluted by too frequent distractions.

He made some good points – he’s the first GOP pol I’ve ever seen nail a lefty with a pointed debate question on abortion (“Would you allow abortion at 7 months?”) – and landed some good jabs within sometimes over-long answers. 

A strong point was his closing statement, which should have also been his opening statement, and many statements in between: she’s in power now, she’s tied to Biden’s terrible policies, and every promise she’s making now is something she could have done over the last 4 years. 

His low points were the lack of message discipline, which even most of his supporters are wary of, IMHO.  Kamala threw out every bit of BS that she could to try to rattle him, repeating proven hoaxes (very fine people, J6 was worse than the Holocaust, etc.), and he took the bait way too often.  Frustrating!

One face-palm example was her dig at his crowd sizes.  Like everything else, this was a lie – Kamala’s crowds are smaller and phony, made up largely of bussed-in astro turf Dem hacks and union members – and Trump’s aren’t.  But that’s beside the point: crowd size is an irrelevant metric. (If his crowd sizes vs. Biden’s in 2020 were dispositive, he would have won by 30 points, even accounting for vote rigging and fraud). 

So arguing about crowd size is not just a waste of time and a distraction, but it connects with one of Trump’s negatives: his ego.  We all know that the national Dems are pathological narcissists with ginormous egos themselves, but Trump wears his on his sleeve, and it does not attract independents that he needs, to say the least. 

His smart answer would have been that every time she tried to bait him, he should have given a Trump version of Reagan’s head shake and grin, and, “There you go again.”  Which he could follow with a 1-2 sentence specific slap down, before returning to his policy arguments. 

Something like, “I know you’d like to divert us with childish distractions, and if I had your horrible record and failed policies – open borders that are hurting Americans all over the country, high crime, high inflation, record debt – I’d want to change the subject, too!  But I’m not going to waste Americans’ time on such desperate ploys, while the country is suffering from the Biden-Harris mal-administration.”

You know that Trump’s team had to have been coaching him to not take the bait, and it’s aggravating that after 9 years in politics, he still can’t reliably do it.  But that being said, since everyone knows Trump so well by now, I don’t think that that will seriously hurt him. But it’s a missed opportunity in a limited-opportunity environment.

The MSM “moderators” – Inflated grade, F minus.  Legitimate grade, F to the infinity of all minuses.

It’s often been said that we don’t hate the media enough.  But after Tuesday night, I’m getting there.   And may God have mercy on their souls. 

David Muir was a dishonest, condescending hack, as was Linsey Davis.  (I won’t comment on the well-known advice about how you should never trust someone named “Linsey” with no “d” in her name.  But she definitely proved that truism.)  

They made CNN look reasonable, which I wouldn’t have believed possible.

They did for Kamala what Kamala did for Willie Brown.  And they left that stage with the same amount of dignity as she had when she left his office, straightening out her clothes as if everyone in the outer office didn’t know exactly how her “climb the political ladder” plan was going.

This is not hard, people: YOU CAN’T HAVE PLAYERS FROM THE OTHER TEAM BEING REFS!  OH!  OHHHHHHHH!

(Sorry about that.  My keyboard is now intermittently defaulting to the Sam Kinison filter, and I’m having a hard time controlling it.) 

The bogus and constant fact-checking of Trump and gentle head-patting for Kamala was pathetic.

One way to counter that, for our candidates in the future:  When the first fact-check comes up, hit them immediately: “There’s no time for me to fully rebut that statement in this real-time debate.  But – [Here you give a specific evidential claim] – and I encourage everyone to do their own research on this point, and you’ll see that I’ve got nothing to hide, and I am telling you the truth.  My campaign site will have all the evidence, with supporting references, by the time this debate is over.  And when you confirm that for yourself, I know that you’ll remember who was lying to you just now, and why.”

In any case, one reliable conservative move for the last several decades (it has worked since at least Nixon) is to attack the bias of the press, and Muir and Davis gave Trump such a target-rich environment.  I so wish he would have taken 30 seconds to point that out!

For example, when they had fact checked him for the fifth time – often in distorted ways, and sometimes just flat-out wrongly – he should have started one answer with, “I’m going to answer your question, but I just want to point out that you’ve now fact-checked me (use some air quotes around that phrase) four or five times, and you’ve let Kamala lie way more times than that without doing the same to her.  People see what you’re doing, which explains how little you are trusted by the public.  Anyway, on to your latest biased question…”

One more note: I admire a lot about Trump, and desperately want him to win, and my analysis here is a little unfair to him, in one sense.  I’ve got time to analyze, and can apply “esprit de l’escalier” – the “wit of the staircase,” i.e. good responses/comebacks that you only think of as you’re leaving a party. 

Even though Trump had to know that many of Kamala’s false attacks were coming when he got to the party, the extent of the moderators’ wrong-footing him – even compared to past bad examples! – made his job a lot harder than ours is now, after the fact.

I think the Daily Wire post-debate panel got it mostly right: While this was something of a wasted opportunity for Trump, they don’t think this is going to fundamentally change the election.  It’s tight, and it’s likely to remain tight, and this debate didn’t change anybody’s mind about Trump (his Trumpiness has been baked into the cake for a long time now), nor about Kamala. 

They thought that Trump clearly won the first 25 minutes of the debate and the final statements, but that Harris’ taunting him on crowd sizes started him into a bait-taking mistake, followed by Muir and Davis turning in the sleaziest performance in the history of media whore-dom.  (I am paraphrasing slightly.)  

I don’t believe that Kamala’s handlers will let her do another debate, even though her side called for that.  (Purely as a feint, IMHO, because it momentarily makes them look confident.)   She’s an extremely vulnerable candidate, because she’s transparently dishonest and cloying, and also a dullard.  The fact that she survived one debate – yes, with the assistance of horrifically corrupt moderators – is the high-water mark of her political career, and she’d have nowhere to go from there but down.

(And okay, feel free to insert a Willie Brown joke here if you must.)

My main hope is that our side highlights the many instances of partisan hackery and lies from the moderators and Kamala, and then moves on to disciplined attacks on her and Walz, and that enough undecided voters see that and take it to heart.

Trump has his flaws, but he’s also got virtues, and you can’t say the same about Kamala.  She is a poisonous and inauthentic grifter, and we need to spend every minute and dollar between now and November bringing that before the voters!

Hamas delenda est!

I Assess the State of the Race, and Get a Few Rib Kicks in on Dick Cheney (posted 9/9/24)

I’m afraid that creepy Juan Merchan helped the Dems dodge a bullet last week.

As I was making a few notes for today’s column several days ago, I was prepared to discuss what I think will be the three most important events – barring some unforeseen world catastrophe or October surprise – remaining in this election season: the Trump/Harris debate, the Vance/Walz debate, and the sentencing of Trump on September 16th in the bogus NY “34 felonies” case.

And then the corrupticrat judge Merchan postponed the sentencing until after the election.  And just to prove that he is no more capable of shame than the Democrat hacks who have advanced the illegitimate lawfare cases against Trump, Merchan explained that he was doing so partly because he wanted to avoid the appearance of trying to influence the election.

You’re a little late for that, Juan.

Unfortunately, I think his decision was a smart one for the left, because they had painted themselves into a corner.  They thought that hitting Trump with an avalanche of charges and then trumpeting his felon status would turn the people against him and guarantee Biden’s victory.

When that backfired, and rallied even non-Trumpies to his side, they had only three sentencing options, all of them bad.  Merchan couldn’t give him no prison, because that would have infuriated the left, and implicitly admitted that the entire case was b.s. the whole time.  (You can’t scream that someone is Hitler for years, then convict him at Nuremberg, and then sentence him to… a stern talking to and a letter to go into his permanent record.) 

But by now everyone knows that sentencing him to prison would only re-infuriate his half of the electorate, make a martyr of him, and drive his polls upward.

The only other option would be to give him a deferred prison sentence, delaying his actual imprisonment until after the election and/or the appeals process was complete.  That would have combined the worst effects of the other two options, enraging the left and hyper-motivating the right and independents. 

So kicking the can down the road until after the election was the smartest course for Merchan, assuming that he’s a corrupt and dishonest partisan tool.  Which he obviously is.

I just wish that the Trump team hadn’t asked Merchan to delay his sentencing, which gave him the fig leaf that made it easier to do so.  The fact that the execrable Alvin Bragg did not oppose Trump’s request is more proof that the request inadvertently served the left’s agenda.

This was one time when I’d prefer to have seen the over-the-top combative Trump!  He should have dared Merchan to make his day, and insisted that he be sentenced immediately on these phony, trumped-up charges, so that he could begin the appeals that Merchan and Bragg know will overturn this illegitimate verdict. 

That leaves the debates.

I’ve been very happy with the way JD has been handling his many media interviews.  He’s obviously smart and disciplined, and he has exposed and shot down one bad-faith, dishonest question after another.  He’s also displayed an ability to avoid being distracted by the MSM hacks, and pivot back to the issues, and the obvious mistakes and flip-flops of Harris-Walz.  

Walz, on the other hand, is even worse than my first impression of him.  How does somebody spend literally decades lying about everything, and somehow not get any better at it?  He was never in combat, he knew that his Guard unit was going to be called up to fight before he quit, he didn’t retire as a command sergeant major, he didn’t get his children through IVF.   

If that guy told me that Liz Warren is a white lady, I might actually believe she’s a Cherokee.  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

Also, I don’t trust a guy who’s two years younger than me and looks like he’s old enough to be my dad.

In his one interview with Que Mala, he showed why the campaign is hiding him as much as they’re hiding the Cackler.  His non-answers were evasive and pathetic, and his transparently phony “Midwestern Dad” act makes my skin crawl.

I’ve seen the real thing.  My dad was a midwestern dad.  My grandparents and uncles were midwestern dads.  I’m a midwestern dad, even though I’ve been transplanted to the Free State.

And if all of us were together having the cholesterol special at the Illini Lounge and Tim Walz came in and spent about three minutes there, my dad would elbow me and say, “Who’s the arrogant commie, and why is he wearing epaulets on a hoodie, and a whistle around his neck?” 

So I’m looking forward to JD Vance wiping the floor with A-WOLz. 

Que Mala is obviously a target-rich environment, too.  I taught argument and debate for years, but if I was assigned to prepare her for the debate, I’d tell her to fake a heart attack, and then run the rest of her campaign from an ICU bed, while an aide explained that she can’t talk because she’s intubated.

She has a horrible record, and it’s indefensible.  She has only one issue offering a polling advantage over Trump – abortion – and he’s blunted her attack by taking an inoffensive/mushy moderate position.  He favors the three common exceptions (rape, incest, life of the mother) that make up 1% of abortions, and his SCOTUS judges have left the issue to the voters, rather than dictating a result, the way Roe did. 

All she has is lies and distortions (which she can’t support), empty promises (which she could have carried out since 2021 but hasn’t), and ad hominem attacks (which she can’t spell). 

So it all comes down to Trump, and whether we’ll see good Trump – aggressive but charming, focused, and disciplined – or bad Trump – distracted and susceptible to being baited.

We saw both in the last week.  Trump’s address to the NY Economics Club on Thursday was great!  He laid out a menu of policies that would “Make America Affordable Again,” with facts and examples that would appeal to economy nerds and regular kitchen-table Americans alike. 

He hit all the relevant numbers – average increase in net worth and yearly income during his administration, and the erosion of both during Biden-Harris, along with the same pattern working out re: gas prices, groceries, interest rates, etc.  Plus Elon Musk is coming on board to analyze ways to streamline federal bureaucracies!

Then we got an hour of bad Trump on Friday, when he gave a rambling press conference blasting E. Jean Carroll and several other accusers.  He insulted one of his accusers’ looks, saying she  “would not have been the chosen one,” and disparaged his own lawyers.

Obviously Carroll is a loon, and that entire case was a blatant miscarriage of justice, perpetrated by a corrupt NY leftist court system, starting with passing a Trump-targeting law to retroactively change the statute of limitations. 

But we’re two months away from a crucial election, and every minute Trump spends on anything other than exposing and defeating Harris-Walz is a boost for the Democrats and a hindrance for Trump.   

Please, Mr. President, I’m begging you, leave the lawfare to your lawyers, and focus on winning in November.  Give us more of last Thursday, and less of last Friday!

Finally… boy, did Dick Cheney ever live up to his first name or what?  To think that a guy I once admired, a guy who shot a lawyer in the face, has sunk to endorsing Que Mala!

I understand that many conservatives have their disagreements with Trump.  I’m one of them, as regular readers know.  I didn’t appreciate it when he sided with woke mega corp Disney, when he trashed DeSantis, praised evil leftist Stacy “M-1” Abrams over the GOP alternative in GA, etc.

But those are all trivial objections now.  Trump is mostly conservative, and his first three years in office gave us the most conservative governance we’ve had since Reagan.  And Harris-Walz (and Obama, Imhotep Pelosi and whoever else would be pulling their strings) are far-left disasters who would spend every day in office undermining every conservative principle that our country was founded on.

Given all that, we have a binary choice, and NO conservative of any stripe can possibly choose to support Harris-Walz! It’s not even close, and the Cheneys have shown themselves to be fools, knaves, and many other things I can’t write in a public forum because I’m a gentleman.

No matter how many lawyers you may shoot in the face in the future, you’re dead to me, Dick Cheney!

Hamas delenda est!

For One Shining Moment, the Press Does their Job… and a Dem Prez Instantly Falls (posted 7/26/24)

Well, tomorrow will be one month since the most decisive debate since Lincoln-Douglas. 

Before anyone accuses me of exaggeration – you might think that we all remember Lincoln as the guy who beat the Democrats and freed their slaves, while Douglas has faded from history – I have to point out that Douglas was able to complete a series of debates during which he spoke for many hours without worrying audiences that he had shuffled off this mortal coil.

Joe Biden STARTED the debate by shuffling into the room in a manner that suggested he may have left his mortal coil in the green room.  From there he didn’t just make some gaffes, or have some bad moments, or lose badly.

He was so metaphysically awful that after 90 minutes, the entire nation decided that he cannot run for president anymore.  That, my friends, is one terrible debate performance.

We’ve learned many things in the last, tumultuous month: A cognitively disabled man can be president for three and a half years.  A gentle, 3-degree slope on a roof makes it impossible for a secret service agent to get onto it.   No matter what you may have heard, Que Mala was NOT the Border Czar.  (I guess because technically she was the “Border Czarina?” Gendered Russian grammar for the win!)

But for me, the most eye-opening experience was getting just a brief glimpse of what our political landscape would look like if the press actually did their job on a regular basis.  Because holy moly, did they ever destroy Joey Gaffes in record time! 

And they didn’t do it via dirty tricks or biased coverage.  They simply started telling the truth and asking tough but fair questions.  For a couple of weeks!  And Biden’s 120-year career in politics was over, just like that.

Can you imagine if the MSM had done that to Bill Clinton?  “We’ve noticed that despite the fact that you’re a huge feminist hero, every intern who walks out of your office either has mussed up hair, messed up lipstick, or is rubbing her rear end.  What’s up with that?  Also, you clearly perjured yourself under oath, and since losing your law license over that means that you’ve been declared too unethical to be a lawyer – who knew there was such a thing? – how are you ethical enough to be a president?”

Or Hillary Clinton?  “We’re going to doggedly stay on your Rose Law Firm scandal and your impossibly successful cattle trading returns until we get to the bottom of them.  (We’ve noticed that your only even tangential connection to cattle is that you both have cloven hooves.) Also, your setting up a secret server and calling a meeting at which you ordered your minions to smash all of their Blackberries with hammers only makes sense as evidence of your staggering corruption and devotion to evading responsibility for blatantly illegal actions, and we’re going to expose those completely.”

Or Barack Obama?  “How could you listen to Jeremiah Wright’s whitey-hating, anti-American sermons for 20 years – and take the title of your first autobiography (which you definitely did not write yourself) from one of those racist screeds – and not notice what a malevolent loon he obviously is?  Also, wasn’t setting up a fake Greek Temple in Denver to give a speech from, and then claiming that your getting the nomination was ‘the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal’ super narcissistic?”

“And by the way, you never met your African dad until adulthood, and were raised by your white mom and white grandparents in Kansas, Indonesia and Hawaii, surrounded by white people, Hawaiians and Indonesians.  Doesn’t that make you about as culturally black as Liz Warren is ethnically red?”  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

Years ago I remember reading a pollster’s estimate that one-sided leftist bias in MSM campaign coverage produces an approximate 8-to-10-point swing favoring Democratic presidential candidates, and that’s always seemed about right.  But the last month has proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Remember: with the MSM covering for Joe Biden, he had 36 years in the US Senate, 8 years as Vice President, and one term as President.  But when the media turned on him and started reporting honestly, he was forced out of politics in a fortnight!

Which brings us to Biden’s unsatisfying speech on Wednesday night.

Not counting the aforementioned sudden bout of media honesty, there were only three, obviously true reasons why Biden stepped down.   And spoiler alert: Biden and all national Dems are allergic to obvious truths (see: men can’t be women; Hunter’s laptop was Hunter’s laptop; the border is not secure, etc.). 

So guess who avoided those true reasons like a Jewish vegan avoiding a pork chop wrapped in bacon?

The first two true reasons are: 1. Joe’s been cognitively and physically deteriorating at a frightening rate, and 2. Polls show that he was going to lose badly to Trump. 

We all know that the Democrat elite didn’t give a damn about the first one, because they’ve known about it for years.  They ran Joe in 2020 primarily by keeping him in his basement, for crying out loud.  And everyone who had never been within ten miles of Biden still knew that he was cognitively challenged – comedians were doing accurate impressions of his shuffling and mumbling, and there were ubiquitous internet “greatest gaffes” compilations of his addled and awkward bumblings back in 2019.

Yet somehow Biden insiders – from his sapphic Kewpie-doll spokeswoman to his cabinet officials to his own family – claim that they had no idea of the infirmity that even primitive tribesmen living as remotely as the cannibals who ate ol’ Uncle Appetizer Biden knew about!  

So the Dem elite clearly knew about his manifest infirmities and unfitness to serve, and they just as clearly didn’t care.   But they definitely cared about the second factor – his likely defeat by Trump – because they are power-hungry, soulless Machiavellians who would sell their own mothers into Willie Brown’s harem to retain their power.

So Joe had a tough task in his Wednesday night “speech.”  He had to explain a momentous decision that had only three possible explanations – I can’t control my thoughts or my bowels; I was going to get my butt kicked by Orange Hitler; or my fellow Dems are a bunch of faithless snakes who went all “et tu, Brute?” on my wrinkly old arse – without actually admitting any of those obvious truths.

He did about as well as he could with that… which was not so much.

He basically gave a stump speech about what a great president he was, touting all of his made-up accomplishments (“I lowered drug prices! I beat Medicare! I took a shot of cancer to the moon!”), taking credit for the inevitable economic improvements after the artificially imposed covid recession, and ignoring everything he actually did.

So it’s no wonder that his speech made no sense.  His message boiled down to, “I’ve been such a tremendous, super-successful president… that the best thing I can do for my party and the country is to get out of the race.”

What better way was there for Joe Biden to go out?  After starting his long, incoherence-filled political career in 1973, he left on one final note of complete incoherence.

Well done, Joe.  Please accept this final poem, composed in your honor, from Dylan Thomas, me, and all of CO nation:

Do not go gentle into that political night,

Old age should slur and stutter at close of campaign;

Rage, rage, against Obama and Que Mala!

Hamas delenda est!

The Incredible Aftermath of Biden’s Stepping Down (posted 7/22/24)

Well, I certainly picked an event-filled week to go off the grid – or at least semi-off the grid – for a week’s trip up north to see my family.  I haven’t even gotten a chance to keep up on the CO site (!) though I dipped in from time to time.

I didn’t see any of the GOP convention live, although I saw a lot of clips and highlights, and I’ve had a chance to listen to a week’s worth of my top 4 political podcasts during my 17-hour drive home, so I think I’ve got a pretty good sense of the goings-on. 

Of course the latest bombshell is that Biden’s campaign is now officially as defunct as his neural synapses have been for, oh, call it at least 4 years now. 

We’ll all be dissecting the total upheaval in the campaign for a while, but I’ve got at least a few fragmented, end-of-a-long-drive thoughts from off the top of my head:

First, there are a lot more Joe Biden jokes I’ve half composed that will now go to waste.  I’d been looking forward to seeing how many variations of “settle it at the battle box” I could work into future columns.  (Early contenders were “butter box” and “bottle box,” but “bullet box” would have had to wait.  Because: too soon.) 

I did have one brainstorm that can still work, though.  You know how they put together those “In Memoriam” segments every year at the Oscars, honoring the Hollywood types who have died in the past year? 

I thought that I could create one of those for Biden, and get some tech wizard in CO nation to hack into the convention site in Chicago and play it on the big screen during the convention. 

Just a taste: a black screen appears as “Adagio for Strings” plays mournfully, then a black-and-white montage of Biden falling up mobile airport stairs and over sandbags and off of bicycles, and wandering around stages and shaking hands with ghosts goes on for a few minutes.  At the end the camera moves through a cemetery, finally coming to rest on a tombstone with “Joseph Robinette Biden, 1843-2024” carved on it.  Below that, the epitaph: “Never underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up,” Barack Obama    

It would have been funnier right before Joe made his “speech” accepting the nomination, but I think it can still work.

I know Joe is in for the ridiculously unearned hagiography treatment at the convention.  He’ll be hailed as a Washington-esque figure, praised for voluntarily giving up the campaign as a moving act of self-sacrifice on behalf of a grateful nation. 

Rather than the truth: he’s always been a small-time grifter who bumbled into the WH after a rigged primary and a hiding-in-the-basement rigged campaign in 2020, and was preparing to stumble in again, courtesy of MSM malfeasance and a scorched-earth lawfare campaign against Trump.  Until he forgot to take his special blend of Red Bull, amphetamines and lion testosterone extract before the debate, and accidentally revealed to us the centenarian behind the curtain.

And then the polls went south and the money spigot was closed, and suddenly all of his co-grifters were hustling him to the door and handing him his hat and a one-way ticket to Palookaville. 

Or at least Malarkey-ville.  

But before he goes, they’ll give him a send-off at the convention.  And how funny would it be if he was sitting there on the edge of falling asleep when my pirate “In Memoriam” presentation started playing all over the hall?

Good times.

Anyway… (as Joe might say)… we’re now facing a whole new election, and we need to keep pouring it on, and taking nothing for granted.  My modest proposal would be to spend the bulk of Elon’s $45 million per month on an army of lawyers and poll watchers in all of the battleground states – I’ve been reliably informed that that’s where they keep the battle boxes – to do everything possible to stop the steal this time.  

I’m really glad that Biden endorsed Que Mala (#neverunderestimateJoe’sability…), because that choice has got to have the smartest Dem pols pulling their hair out.  She’s the only person in this hemisphere with lower poll ratings than Joe, and I’m sure the power-brokers didn’t want to go through the humiliating process of lying for and then knifing Joey Gaffes in public, just to replace him with someone almost as likely to lose as he was!

And it warmed my heart to see the beginnings of a painful lefty-on-lefty civil war breaking out almost immediately. 

On one side are the pols and celebrities who immediately jumped on the Que Mala bandwagon: Slick Willy and the Pantsuit; super-villain Soros; Juicy Booty and the Squad (worst bar band ever!); Grandma Squanto Warren; Ken-Doll Newsom; plus professional pretendians including DeNiro, Middler, Ruffalo, etc. 

Even Jim Clyburn – who five minutes ago was “Ridin’ with Biden” is now all, “Scare us with Harris.”   

On the other side is the Obamas, Schumer, Jeffries, the NY Times Editorial Board, and Imhotep “Aiieee! The mummy lives!  Kill it with fire!” Pelosi.  And, presumably, all suitably Machiavellian Dems, who can’t believe their co-religionists actually want to replace the Mumbler with the Cackler.  (Worst Batman villains ever!)

Hopefully this will shape up as the political equivalent of the Iran-Iraq war, in which both sides are so awful that we can just hope for protracted fighting and lots of casualties all around. 

Can you remember a wilder campaign season ever?  One month ago Biden was cruising toward a coronation convention; we were wondering whether he would really show up for any debates; the only assassination attempts on Trump were aimed at his character, and none of us had ever heard of Butler, PA.  Trump didn’t have a running mate, SCOTUS hadn’t ruled on immunity or nuked Jack Smith’s appointment, and nobody knew that the head of the Secret Service was a DEI incompetent, or worse.   

And all of this has changed in what feels like the blink of an eye! 

I guess Que Mala was right. 

There really is a great significance to the passage of time!

Hamas delenda est!

Thoughts on the Aftermath of Trump’s Near-Assassination (posted 7/15/24)

The firehose of news since Saturday’s failed assassination attempt has been disorienting.  It’s hard for me to even remember how different the world and the political landscape looked only three weeks ago.  Biden’s debate collapse and the resulting firestorm of unprecedented chaos on the left completely upended what had already felt like a volatile, crucial, turning-point election.  

And then Trump comes with an inch of being murdered, and all hell breaks loose. 

As usual, the CO site has been a good place to come to sort it all out.  CO has offered insightful and wry posts, the COSE has said what many of us were thinking, and the reactions of CO nation have run the gamut, giving voice to all of the conflicting emotions that we’re all cycling through.

For me, the surreal feeling on Saturday was compounded because I am toward the end of reading the true story of another assassination attempt on another American president – one I should have known about, but didn’t.  

The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington, by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch tells the story of a plot that unfolded in the late spring and summer of 1776, during the run-up to the British navy arriving in force in NYC for the first big battle of the Revolutionary War. 

NY Governor William Tryon and NYC mayor David Matthews were both enemies of Washington and the revolution, and they funded and led the plot.  (Just as today, NY and NYC have been plagued by terrible governors and mayors, apparently.)  The conspiracy was widespread, and involved many loyalist citizens, some Continental soldiers, and most shockingly, Washington’s own housekeeper and a small number of his own elite force of “life guards.”  (Basically, our new nation’s first iteration of what would one day become our secret service protection teams.)

Watching the story of an unfolding assassination attempt in real time, nearly 250 years later, was very strange.  Even with all of the obvious differences between our colonial beginnings and today, the sense of fate turning on the smallest of issues – a shooter inexplicably getting so close to a president, a fortuitus turn of a head – and disaster narrowly averted echoes from that tumultuous time to this.

Washington’s religious views could be semi-opaque at times, but he always spoke of Providence guiding him through the war years, and never so much as during the summer of 1776.  And it’s easy for me to see that same Providence at work this weekend.

I’ve still got a lot of negative emotions to work through.  After years of lies, demonization and Hitler/Trump comparisons, we don’t hate the media enough, for example.  I’m appalled by the hypocrisy of the left, as they turned on a dime from throwing everything but the kitchen sink at us, to lecturing us about our need to “lower the temperature.” 

But I’m going to do my best to focus on the many positive things to come out of this weekend, starting with the immense relief and actual joy that comes from surviving such a shockingly close call.   I’ve always loved Churchill’s quote to the effect that, “Nothing is more exhilarating than being shot at without result.”

But today I think he was only half right.  Because for Trump and for us, that quote must be revised: “Nothing is more exhilarating than being shot at and losing only the tip of your ear instead of your life!”

Even now, thinking of what might have happened, of how close we came to disaster, takes your breath away.  Today, I’m the biggest fan of Providence – or as I call it, “Pater, Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus”– of any roving correspondents you know.

But for me, it’s not just a deep and abiding gratitude that is warming my heart.  Because as another philosopher (first name: Conan) once noted, some of the finer things in life are also, “To crush your enemies. See them driven before you. And to hear the lamentations of their press-titutes.” (I have paraphrased, loosely.)

I’m not thinking of the good and decent Democrats in this country – and there are many out there, and we need to remember that.  Those people have to be grateful that Trump survived, even as they recognize the political boost his close call will give him.

But it’s not those decent Dems I’m thinking about.  It’s the creepy, hysterical, malevolent and Machiavellian Dems I’m thinking about.  And I am imagining with great schadenfreude their frustration and impotent fury today. 

Because really: they spied on him, they launched conspiracies against him, they rigged the 2020 election to get rid of him.  Then they saw him coming back, so they deployed transparently illegitimate and corrupt lawfare cases against him, and they even got 34 bogus convictions that will be overturned after the election is over.

And the more they smeared and fought dirty against him, the better his polls got.  Then their candidate reveals his own fragility and dementia – and their own shameful, years-long coverup of same – at the 11th hour, sending them scrambling to find a desperate, last-minute solution that involves stumbling through a political-landmine-filled landscape.

And then, on a sunny Saturday, they hear the breaking news: somebody has shot Trump!  And it sounds like it was a head shot!  Maybe their decades of devotion to Satan and all of his dark ministers throughout the hoary underworld (including Slick Willy, Anthony Weiner and Hunter, and their consorts in the whore-y overworld) are finally going to pay off, and their great Orange nemesis will be neutralized at last!

Annnnndddd… it turns out the bullet grazed his ear, and he popped right back up, gave the fist-pump heard around the world, and within 30 minutes the first of a million memes appeared to troll his leftist haters.  (My favorite so far: Trump’s mugshot superimposed over the words, “Missed me, b*tch!”)

Oh, the sweetness of it all.  Their most hated foe cheated fate by an inch, literally.  And in a way that makes the most perfect, campaign-bolstering photo op in human history! 

If the bullet had missed him, the commie conspiracy theorists would have denied that any bullets were fired, or at least that any of them had come within a mile of him.  He was never in any real danger, and he’s lying about the whole thing, which he probably staged!

But no. The bullet dramatically grazed his ear. Which, as Uncle Jesus would have it – sorry, I mean “as Providence would have it” — is filled with blood vessels, which can produce a lot of blood without threatening someone’s life the way a sliced femoral artery or jugular would.  But the blood can produce an amazing, visceral picture.

Did I mention that as the inevitable photos were being snapped, there was an American flag right behind him?! 

So you’ve got a white guy with light-colored hair, bleeding dramatic, scarlet blood, under a perfect blue sky, framed beneath Old Glory, rippling in the wind!   

How upset were the deranged goons at the New York Times at that image?  They digitally removed the flag from their photo.  I’m not making that up!  They photoshopped their own picture to make it less iconic.

Which is just an epic self-own, and a delicious echo of their shameful past as pro-Stalinist propagandists.  Just like Stalin used to crudely doctor pictures to “erase” comrades who had fallen out of favor, the NY Times is now doctoring photos to erase the American flag, which has never been too highly favored at the Times.

Especially when it looks great in a photo, and helps Trump. 

Note: I’m now on the road in TN to see mom and sis, and will be up in Illinois for several days to hang with the cousins, before heading back and spending some pre-birthday time with mom.  I probably won’t be writing a Friday column, unless I just can’t help it!

Hamas delenda est!

Trump Was Already President Once, + Lefties’ Insistence on Controlling Language (posted 7/10/24)

I’m not going to focus on Joe Biden in this column, as tempting as that is.  Because I am a well-raised Midwesterner, and have been taught not to speak ill of the dead.

Instead, I’d like to address what seems like the Left’s main strategy for this election: issuing dire warnings about the impending doomsday that will surely befall the nation if Trump wins in November.

When I heard the first Democrat or MSM empty head say that – I can’t remember who it was, since there have been so many – I thought it was the most desperate and stupid thing I’d ever heard.  Not just because it’s transparently false, but because it couldn’t possibly work.

During the 2016 campaign that was at least a plausible strategy.  Because of Trump’s wild, undisciplined talk and lack of a political track record, people could rightly worry about how he’d perform in office.  Would he really try to lock Hillary up?  Who knew?

Many conservatives shared my concerns that Trump might actually be a RINO in a fighter’s disguise.  He had been a lifelong Democrat, worked closely with and donated to Dems all over NY, was pro-choice, etc.  (Of course I was thrilled when he turned out to be mostly conservative, especially during his first three years in office and before the covid/Fauci problem hurt him.)

But now, after he served four years with very good results (again, excepting the unprecedented pandemic year), it doesn’t make sense to try to scare the voters with a hypothetical. There’s a reason that he got 11 million more votes in 2020 than he had in 2016!  People saw what he did, and they saw the results, and they liked most of it.

But the Dems can’t give it up.  DeNiro’s hysterical comment is typical: “If he ever gets elected, he will never leave!” 

He did get elected, you mook!  And he left! 

The example that has stuck in my mind came from Bill Maher, a reasonably smart, obnoxious lefty who has been at least intermittently sane this election cycle.  He’s very well-informed about politics, but he still has giant blind spots which demonstrate that he only follows lefty “news” sources, and thus is actually badly misinformed about many issues.

For example, Maher apparently believes that the small group of unarmed January 6th protestors were a serious insurrectionist threat, and that all of the protestors were violent would-be usurpers, all evidence to the contrary! 

When he did a show with Dave Rubin last year, he also insisted that Hillary never denied that Trump had won the election or called him an “illegitimate president” dozens and dozens of times.  I don’t think he was lying about that: he really did not know.

He must have gotten trolled about that enough that he now knows that she did that, which means that she is as much of an “election denier” as Trump is.  (And with much less justification!)

But just a few months ago, with Megyn Kelly, he was right back at it.  This time, he drew a big distinction that hinged on the word “concede,” arguing that Hillary conceded her election loss while Trump never did.  When Kelly brought up her dozens of “illegitimate prez” claims over the succeeding years, he dove right back in, insisting that the morning after the election Hillary conceded that Trump won.  And he repeatedly charged that Trump has never done so.

I guess you can say that there’s two ways to “concede” an election: verbally, and through your actions.  And I don’t understand anybody who values the former over the latter.  Many politicians insist that they were cheated, and that they actually won.  (I’m looking at you, Stacy Abrams.) 

Some of them might even have a case.  (I’m NOT looking at you, Stacy Abrams.)  But who cares what they say, as long as they leave?

I don’t mind that Abrams has insisted for years that she won the GA governor’s race.  In fact, it’s been pretty entertaining to watch.  But on inauguration day, she was at home eating a gallon of ice cream with a comically over-sized ladle (I’m guessing), watching Kemp take the oath of office.  

The same applies to 2016.  Hillary verbally conceded one time, the morning after the election, and then she spent the last 8 years taking it back, and insisting that she won.  Good.  That makes me smile, every time. 

Trump never said the words, “I lost,” because in his heart (and in many, many people’s opinion) it’s not true.  But after telling people to peacefully protest and mounting a legal but ineffective court challenge, he left office. 

That seems to mean nothing to Maher.  When Kelly pointed out that Trump left office, he repeatedly returned to the mantra of “he never conceded!”

 It’s a weird mental and verbal tic that I’ve noticed a lot of lefties have: insisting that people SAY what they demand, regardless of their actions.  You see it in many contexts. 

For example, when the left was pushing for gay marriage, conservatives and moderates offered a compromise: let’s grant gay people all the legal rights of marriage, but just call it a “civil union.” 

Activists had pointed out the unfair treatment of gay partners – they sometimes couldn’t be admitted as “family” to hospitals when a partner was dying, they couldn’t automatically inherit or get the same tax benefits as a spouse did, etc.  Establishing legal civil unions would remedy all of those concerns, but without applying the verbiage of “marriage,” which had for time immemorial been applied only to male/female relationships.

And that was unacceptable to the left.

The same is true of all of the insane battles over pronouns.  You can be a hulking dude with a full beard and an erection, and call yourself Suzie Snowflake for all we care.  But you can’t force people to call you a woman, and address you as “she.” 

This isn’t just a trivial linguistic quirk, but a core distinguishing attribute of the quasi-totalitarian left, IMO.  It’s not enough for them to be given equal rights or tolerance.  We must be forced to submit and acknowledge the rightness of their position.  Thus you get the giant guy in a dress in a convenience store, sounding like James Earl Jones, when a harried clerk called him “sir”: “It’s ma’am.  It’s MA’AM!”

Maher’s position is essentially the same.  It doesn’t matter that there’s a ton of evidence that the 2020 election was at the least rigged, or that Trump had good reason for believing so, or that he voluntarily left office.  He must say the words.  He must be FORCED to say the words!

And somehow Maher and many on the left feel like they are the put-upon victims, and Trump is the authoritarian bully and threat.  What must it be like to live in that kind of distortion field every day of your life?

To sum up:

A man is not a woman, and you can’t make us say that.

“Ze” and “Zir” are not pronouns, and you can’t make us say them. 

Trump was already president, and he wasn’t Orange Hitler, and the country did just fine, and you can’t scare us with your hysterical warnings about what didn’t happen before, and won’t happen again.

Hamas delenda est!

Are Trump’s “Lies” Like Leftist Lies? (posted 7/8/24)

As I am writing this well after midnight on Sunday, it looks like Biden is going to be forced out of the race.  Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon.  

The Biden family and their closest hangers-on have circled the wagons, but the howling mob of feckless media and Liz Warrens are firing more and more arrows their way. (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

And on the inside they’ve got… non-Dr. Jill (“The patient is fine, everything’s fine.  He answered all the questions!”)  Oh, and also Hunter.  Which isn’t great, because when you’re surrounded by aggressive opponents you need crack shots, not crack heads.

Meanwhile, the hypocritical chutzpah of the MSM knows no bounds.  Two small-time radio hosts are in trouble because they admitted that within the last week, Biden’s team sent them pre-arranged questions to ask Biden during radio interviews.  One of the hosts was fired, and the media is in a huff, shocked – Shocked, I tells ya! – that “journalists” would collude with a Democrat candidate!

(Remember that time when CNN hack Donna Brazile admitted to giving Hillary the debate questions beforehand?  And you can watch her right now on ABC News!)

Another good example is this Breitbart headline from Saturday: “Hollywood Donors Rage at Katzenberg for Convincing Them Biden Wasn’t Too Old to Run.”

CONVINCING them!

The sub-head is even better: “People Are Pissed, They Feel Betrayed”

Yes!  Katzenberg pulled the wool over their eyes and convinced them, and now they feel betrayed. 

I can see it now.  They’re all sitting around a long table in a conference room, yelling in righteous anger:

“You told us that Biden was the best Biden ever, and that he was in great shape and at the top of his game.  We held debate-viewing parties expected him to show up with a towering intellect and rapier wit, as well as the youthful virility and animal magnetism of a Martin Simpson-esque figure!  And out totters the Crypt Keeper?  You betrayed us!”

They’re a bunch of image-obsessed people in an image-conscious business, yet they want us to believe that they never noticed Biden’s physical decrepitude and mental infirmity over the last four years?  The evidence was all around them, piled as high as human excrement in the streets of San Francisco, but they somehow managed to overlook it.

Even when it came in the form of Robert Hur’s sobering report, and the transcripts that backed it up. Hur testified about the evidence that Biden was guilty of retaining and disclosing classified materials, and that he was only refraining from charging Biden because he thought that a jury might resist convicting because Biden lacked “mens rea,” Latin for “guilty mind.” 

This legal concept involves the diminished capacity of a defendant, and is sometimes paraphrased in our system along the lines of, “Did/does the defendant understand that he was doing something wrong when he committed the crime?”

But everyone with functioning eyes – including those Hollywood liars – could see that Biden lacks “mens rea.”  Along with “mens vivi” (a living mind) and “mens muneris” (a functioning mind).

Even more troubling, during his meeting with the Pope, he also lacked a “mens room.”  (HA!)

It’s gotten so bad that even Rob Reiner is out.  After still defending Biden last week, Reiner put out a tweet yesterday calling for Biden to step down.  My favorite part of the tweet is the first sentence: “It’s time to stop f***ing around.” 

NOW, Rob?  You’ve been “F-ing” around on this planet for 77 years, and NOW it’s time to stop? (I can hear Archie saying it now, “Stifle yourself, Meathead!”

When you’ve lost Meathead, it’s really Joe-ver.

The Biden team’s only argument about the debacle that has gotten any traction – by which I mean the MSM has taken it up and repeated it shamelessly – is that Trump lied so, SO much during the debate.  Which is infuriating, in the context in which every understandable word out of Biden’s mouth was dishonest.

Sure, Trump tells lies.  Like all politicians, and like all of us.  But from the first days of his administration, I’ve been aggravated by the mismatch between the way the MSM talks about Trump’s “lies” vs. Democrat lies. 

Most of Trump’s lies are exaggerations (his inauguration had the biggest crowd in the history of earth, he had the safest border in the history of the country), or half-truths (nobody thought Roe was a good decision), and many of them are about petty/trivial issues (Does anybody believe that his WH accurately reported his weight, or that he just won a non-senior club golf championship?)

A lot of his “lies” are bombastic generalizations of an accurate statement.  (Saying “we had the best environmental numbers ever,” isn’t checkable; saying “everybody in the world respected us” cannot be literally true, etc.)

And many of Trump’s lies are actually Democrat lies about what he said.  He didn’t tell people to inject bleach to fight covid, he didn’t call Nazis “very fine people,” etc.

Compare those to the lies told by Dems that the MSM never seems to notice. 

Obama rammed through a partisan health care plan impacting 1/6th of the economy on two monumental lies: if you like your doctor and your health plan, you can keep both under Obamacare. 

The repeated Democrat lies about the Russian hoax hampered Trump’s administration for years.  The Hunter laptop Russian disinformation lie may have changed the outcome of the close election in 2020.  Constant lies about race – cops kill tens of thousands of unarmed, innocent blacks every year; the 1619 project; there is institutional racism everywhere – have poisoned race relations.

And the MSM lie that is unraveling right now – that Joe Biden is a mentally and physically healthy man capable of being a competent president – has to be the most consequential lie of the last decade, at least.

This double standard has always been aggravating, but a comment I heard on a podcast over the weekend really crystallized the issue for me.

Regular readers know that I am a language nerd.  Connotations of different words can be crucial, and I really value searching until you find just the right word.   As a fan of the late, great Norm MacDonald and other great comedians, I see this in comedy as much as in politics.

I’m thinking of an old Chris Rock bit in which he heard someone say that Biggie Smalls and Tupac were “assassinated.”  Rock said – and if you know his stuff, you can hear him spitting out each word — “JFK was assassinated.  Martin Luther King was assassinated.  Them [N words] got SHOT!”    

I thought about that bit yesterday when I heard a disillusioned liberal on Joe Rogan’s show going off on what hypocrites Dems are for calling Trump a liar while they excuse all of Biden’s lies.  He said that Biden is a total liar, while Trump is just a “bullshi**er.”

That clicked.  It’s the right word.

I think Trump is much more than that; he can actually be a very strong communicator.  (During and after the 2016 election, Scott Adams wrote some very insightful analysis about this strength of Trump’s, and how the arrogant left had missed it.)  

But he definitely mixes in a lot of a salesman’s puffery.  And his loose and undisciplined way of speaking often gives his enemies ammunition, as when he uses schoolyard insults, or threatened to put Hillary in jail if he won.

On the other hand, which is worse: sarcastically threatening to be a “dictator for a day” and joking about locking up his opponents, while not doing it?  Or actually behaving like a quasi-dictator?

(As Obama did when, after admitting dozens of times that he cannot lawfully change immigration laws on his own, did just that.  Or as Biden did when he tried to force millions of Americans to take an untested vaccine, stuck the public with billions of unconstitutionally “forgiven” student loans, and unilaterally opened our borders.)

I can hear Chris Rock saying it in my head:

“Trump might be a bullshi**er.  But those guys are LIARS!”

Hamas delenda est!

Zogby’s Wacky Plan, and Why Biden Must Stay in the Race (posted 7/5/24)

I hope everybody in CO nation had a good Independence Day!

It was a very low-key one here; my wife and I walked to the nearby campus where they have fireworks on the 3rd.  We were planning to drive to a nearby small town and see the fireworks there on the 4th, but after I spent a day on a carpentry project and my wife was feeling a little under the weather, we stayed in and watched the fireworks from NYC and DC on tv.

I also recorded a two-part bio of Reagan, because I’m nostalgic for the days when we had a solid, competent president.  I’m going to watch that after I post this column, and remember better days.

I’ve always loved the Fourth, and after a lifetime of only seeing small town fireworks – which are just fine by me, generally – Karen and I talked about going up to DC to see next year’s fireworks on the Mall.  If Trump wins in November, we’ve decided we’re going to be on the Mall a year from today, and check that item off our bucket list.

If Biden or his replacement wins, the idea of going to DC is a little too dispiriting to contemplate right now.  But in the meantime, I’m finding humor where I can, which means that I’m enjoying the Democrat disarray while it lasts.

Just looking at random headlines must be horrifying – and deservedly so – for those knuckleheads.    In the middle of a spate of stories of big blue city papers calling for Joey Gaffes to step down, I saw an editorial out of Atlanta saying that “it’s time for Biden to pass the torch.”

Really?  Everybody knows that that guy couldn’t hold onto a torch, let alone pass it.  Even if he could, would you want fire anywhere near him?  He already walks like Frankenstein.  Do you remember how Frankenstein reacted to torches and fire?

Even scarier?  The White House on Wednesday declared that Que Mala Harris is “the future of the Democratic party.” 

Yikes!  Their present is the most decrepit guy from the most decrepit wing of the nursing home, and their future is cackling inanity.  No bueno.

More hilarity comes from a different corner, in the form of new strategy from James Zogby, leftist brother of pollster John Zogby.  If you haven’t heard of James, two facts about him will tell you all you need to know: he worked on Jesse Jackson’s campaigns for president in the 1980s, and commie fossil Bernie Sanders picked him to work on the Democratic Party’s platform in 2016

Now, after what sounds like a lifetime of bad political choices, James has sent a memo to DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison about how to potentially go about replacing Biden, and it’s a beautiful political Rube Goldberg scheme. 

It would have Biden announcing that he’s not seeking re-election (good luck with that!) and then praising Que Mala but NOT naming her as his successor (seriously, good luck!)  “This would kick off a one-month process, during which presidential hopefuls would vie for the support of the DNC’s voting members. Those participating would need the support of 40 voting members to become an official DNC candidate.”

In other words, he’s proposing to shove crack-head Hunter and non-Dr. Jill aside and pry Joe Biden’s cold, dead hands off the presidency, then knife the first non-white, non-male VP, and then retreat to a smoke-filled room from which party bosses would emerge with a candidate whom no voter had a hand in choosing.

Because: Democracy!

It would be just like Tammany Hall, only with pot smoke replacing the cigar smoke in the room where the nefarious deals were being made. 

The kicker – which I could not make up, even with my fertile imagination – is that Zogby is pitching these corrupt, secretive machinations as follows: “The central idea is to create a process that is open, transparent, and energizing, while, at the same time, legitimate and democratic.”

Good lord!  It’s amazing that Zogby’s pants aren’t as engulfed in flames as Biden would be if he  tried to pass an actual torch to Que Mala!

Listen, James, you dopes had a ready-made “process that is open, transparent… legitimate and democratic.”  [Engage Sam Kinison filter:] It’s called “a PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY!! OH! OHHHH!! [End Kinison filter.]  And rather than letting it play out in legitimate ways, you corruptly rigged it, for the third straight time!   

When it looked like scary, radical great-great-grandpa Bernie might beat Cankles McPantsuit in 2016, the DNC rigged the outcome in her favor.  Then in 2020, when Bernie once again looked capable of beating Biden (in a far-left great-great-grandpa face-off), you rigged it for Biden. 

Thus we got the last four years of the Visiting Angels presidency.  (They’re America’s choice in home care!)

And just a few months ago – because you figured that since you’ve gotten the MSM to go along with your hiding of Biden’s dementia since 2020, why not stick with it? – you rigged your own primary AGAIN!  You wouldn’t allow any actual primary contest or debates, and you even set the rules so that any votes for RFK would not be counted.

And NOW, just because your emperor’s new clothes have been revealed as non-existent, you’d like to pull out an 11th-hour “legitimate, democratic” process?

Guess what, James?  You all are as naked as Brandon is.  And NOBODY wants to see that! 

I, for one, stand with our Cadaver in Chief.  He has the delegates, and thus the nomination, and I think he should cling to his office like grim death, if you’ll excuse the expression. 

You hang in there, Joe Biden!  You didn’t come this far – and live through a jail sentence with Nelson Mandela, and long nights on the road in your 18-wheeler, and a fierce battle with Corn Pop, not to mention your narrow escape from the ferocious cannibals who got ol’ uncle Appetizer – just to quit now!

With non-Dr. Jill behind you, and Hunter with his hand out, and Que Mala at your side, you’re just the guy to take on Orange Hitler!  Don’t believe the polls, and don’t listen to John Zogby.  Make your feckless party dance with the one who brung ‘em!

But don’t actually dance.  For the love of God, don’t try to dance.  In fact, just stay in the White House, take plenty of naps, and have Jill stop by right before Matlock, to tell you how well you’re doing.

Because you’re doing great, and you’re the candidate the Democrats deserve, so don’t you quit!

I’ll be back on Monday with several good news stories, including some analysis of the recent SCOTUS decisions that are causing wailing and gnashing of teeth in all the right lefty circles.

Hamas delenda est!